Easy to Fool When You Were in School
by Road Rhythm
Summary: Dean is hot.  He is the hottest  thing ever to happen to the goddamned planet.  He knows he is, because even his own brother wants him.  And who can blame a guy if that goes to his head a little?
1. One

**Summary: **Dean is hot. He is the hottest thing ever to happen to the goddamned _planet_. He knows he is, because even his own brother wants him. And who can blame a guy if that goes to his head a little?**  
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**Notes: **Written for the spnkink_meme on LJ, where the OP wanted "Sam/Dean, flaunting: Dean somehow finds out that Sam is into him, but he doesn't freak out. It sort of gets to his head, so he flaunts himself all over the place, sometimes genuinely curious, sometimes purposefully being a jackass."

This one was hard for me, because of the two of them, Dean is the one I can more easily see carrying an unrequited, incestuous torch; the conditioning John put him through seems more likely to have distorted his lovemap. The flaunting behavior seemed to fit better with Dean, however—at least as requested by the prompt—so this became an interesting challenge for me.

I'm pretty sure it would have been impossible for Dean and Sam to make it to Mardi Gras in 2008, but the S3 timeline is completely fucked anyway, so what the hell.

May blessings rain upon the head of my beta, Justmmy, for his fabulous (and fast!) editorial work.

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><p>º º º º<p>

* * *

><p>At the time, it wasn't all that funny. If Dean were honest with himself, which occasionally happened, he wasn't finding it funny in the slightest, and he was starting to get <em>pissed<em>. Not being able to get to Sam had that effect on him. Still, they were just sitting here with their thumbs up their asses, him, Sam, and the goddess of the underworld, and that picture would be at least a little funny later on.

"Stalemate, bitch," Dean said.

Hel turned to face him slowly. "Excuse me?"

Dean tried a weak smile. "Stalemate, ma'am?"

She merely pursed her lips and turned back to Sam.

She didn't even have lips to purse, not really, and that was what was so undignified about this. She was an incorporeal signature stranded between two worlds, with less substance than the bottom-shelf ghosts they hunted. She couldn't throw them. She couldn't touch them. She certainly couldn't kill them. But she could keep Sam in that chair, and she could keep Dean outside the chalk circle.

"Please," Sam begged. Dean didn't much like seeing him beg. "It's a good trade."

"Good for whom?" asked Hel. She tilted her not-quite-there head, appraising Sam. Her skin—more a flickering idea of skin—was sallow, marbled with rotting black.

"Good for _all_ of us," said Sam. Dean saw him jerk against the force keeping him in the chair. "You're the goddess of the underworld, right? Half the dead are due unto you, the ones who die of sickness or old age. Except you haven't really been getting your share lately, have you?"

She knelt down in front of Sam. It wasn't a gesture of submission. The black decay moved like a living thing over her bare breasts and thighs. Dean wished that her earthly visage included clothes, but no such luck.

"What makes you think that I want my share?" Her voice was a presence in the room like the dry rot in the wood around them.

"Look at you," Sam said. "You're fading. On every plane. You can't even manifest yourself fully here. In a hundred years, you'll be as far gone as your sisters. Even one new soul coming to you would be a one you're not getting now. It could keep you going for centuries."

"Over-selling it a little," said Hel, sounding bored. "But it's irrelevant. What makes you think I want to…" Her colorless eyes traveled briefly over Dean as he paced restlessly outside the sacrificial circle. "…keep myself from fading?"

The only answer Sam had to that was an open mouth and a stupid look.

Sam could think big, Dean would give him that. He was a persuasive little bastard, too. Not persuasive enough to deal with this chick, apparently, but persuasive enough to have gotten Dean to go along with this in the first place.

"I can't find anything in any of the demon lore to save you from the deal," Sam had said.

"Right, so you need to stop doing shit that can turn you into cooling meat. Please and thank you."

"No, we need to look outside the paradigm."

"What the hell does that mean?" Dean had asked, and he'd been intrigued despite himself. If what Sam had in mind was far enough away from Hell, crossroads, and everything to do with demons, maybe Dean had a chance that wouldn't risk Sam. Maybe they could pull this off. Maybe he could have his cake and eat it, too.

Except the cake was Sam, so that whole line of thought had just not sounded right.

Sam had shown Dean his notes: Hel, sister of Fenrir, daughter of Loki, goddess of the underworld. Dean had found himself actually listening as Sam outlined a plan to summon her. They'd make the appropriate offering of grain, mead, and pig's blood, do obeisance, and ask her to take Dean's soul. In lore, the sick and the old came to Hel's realm. If they could get her to claim Dean, he got to live to ripe old age and she could defend her acquisition against Lilith. She was a goddess. She might have the mojo. Let the big corporations duke it out against each other, Sam had argued, lawyer mode on full.

"And her name is Hel? Man, I can already smell the irony coming off of this one."

Sam had bitchfaced. _"Dean."_

"What if she decides my soul is crunchy and delicious but she doesn't feel like waiting, Sam? Pagan gods are unpredictable, you know that. Say she just kills me right there?"

Sam's eyes had fallen down and away. "Dying's a risk we take every day, Dean. Nothing's more important than keeping you out of Hell."

Dean should never have listened, but he'd wanted to believe so badly that it could work.

"Do I, uh." He'd cleared his throat. "Do I really want to spend eternity in the… 'land of primordial mists'?"

Sam had stared at some point in the distance, obviously trying to keep his face neutral despite the unhappiness shining through. "It's got to be better than Hell."

"All right, all right. We'll try it."

So they had tried it. They were trying it.

It could've been going better.

"This could be going better, Sam," Dean said. He threw a chair conversationally against the invisible wall around the circle. It shattered.

Sam ignored him. "You can't want to die," he said to the thing. Dean was having trouble thinking of her as a goddess. To him, she looked like a spirit with a penchant for nudity and an overblown sense of her own importance.

"Don't presume to know what I want. Death is my province. My house is made of mist. Fading doesn't frighten me. Now _let me go."_

Sam's jaw tightened. "Not until you agree."

"I'm not going to agree. Your brother's soul can rot where it falls."

"I'm right here," Dean said, irritated. "You could at least—"

"I could, but I don't intend to," she said without even looking at him.

"You're not a very giving person, has anybody ever told you that?"

"None of us are very giving," she said musingly. She was still considering Sam. "None of us essential creatures."

"And why is that?" Dean asked. He didn't like the way she was looking at Sam.

"Because we don't _owe_ you anything," she snapped. "It's amazing, the kind of hubris that can summon a goddess from her repose and expect her to care about your petty worries." The gaze she had fixed on Sam went cutting and hot. "Do you know what my name means?"

_"Yes,"_ said Sam. He sounded annoyed, like she'd insulted his professional pride.

"Say it."

Sam straightened in the rickety chair. Thing was liable to break under his weight and dump him on his ass. "_Hel_, from proto-Germanic _khalija_, from proto-Indo-European _kel_." Dean was caught between pride and the urge to smack him. "She who covers up or hides."

"Very good." She was still kneeling. "Did you ever think that the one who covers things up might also know how to uncover them?"

"If you accept a gift you have to give one. Take the sacrifice and promise to take guardianship over Dean's soul, or I'll leave you here forever. Forever, you understand, stuck between worlds, helpless—"

"Helpless. An interesting word." She rested spectral hands on her knees. "Stalemate, your brother said. Because I can't touch you and you can't escape me. But I can humiliate you."

Suddenly she was standing behind Sam, cradling his jaw in transparent fingers. An anguished sound came ripping up from his throat.

"Sam!"

"I have a brother, too," said Hel. "Don't think I can't find something that will break you."

Dean dropped to his knees and started digging at the floorboards with his bowie knife, trying to get at the chalk line. He couldn't scratch it, but maybe if he dug under it, maybe—

"There's a window in you mind," Hel said calmly to Sam. A thin trickle of blood came from his nose. "You merely boarded it up. What you can see out of, I can climb through. All I have to do is remove the boards."

Sam gasped. "Don't."

"A little late for that."

Her not-there fingers adjusted on Sam's face, and Dean knew they were really touching something else entirely. "So much fear. Is it for what I might see, or what I might expose?" She sighed, fingers seeming to slip into Sam's skull, digging deeper, sifting. "Sam is your name, but the demons call you boy-king," she announced, voice unchanged, unexcited.

"Old news, bitch," Dean snarled. A splinter of wood came free from under the chalk line, and he attacked the floor harder.

If Hel heard him, she didn't react. "And… you know you are tainted. You know your own impurity. Is that it, boy-king? Filth and disease running in your veins, evil under your skin? You pollute everything you touch. Why is that?"

"Shut the fuck up," Dean said. More wood chipped away. "Sam, don't listen to her."

"He finds you suffocating," she remarked. Dean looked up in shock before he could stop himself. The humiliation and blood on Sam's face made him angry all over again. "You, and your devotion, and your sacrifice. It makes him want to scream."

"No," Sam got out. The blood leaking from his nose was thicker, now, and Dean's mind flashed on the picture of Sam looking up from Gordon's corpse—guilt and shame and misery.

Half the floorboard was gone but the chalk line was still unbroken. Dean slammed his fist down on the floor. "Damn it, Sam, just let her go!"

"Little Jessica," Hel said to Sam. Her voice was chill fog. "You still sometimes wonder if your brother's glad she died."

Cold flooded Dean's stomach.

"Shut up," Sam whispered. He was clutching his head like he used to when the visions took him. Blood slid off his chin and spattered his shirt, more and more of it.

"Stop resisting, Sam. You can't keep me out and I'm not going to stop. You had your chance."

Dean pounded against the invisible wall. "Sam!"

Hel's colorless eyes rested on Sam with nothing more passionate than curiosity. She hadn't moved. "Once, when you were little, you broke your brother's toy. Simply because he had it and you didn't. You lied about it after. Such an ugly, petty little thing."

"Is that the best you can do?" Dean challenged her. Anything to divert her attention, maybe give Sam the window he needed to upend the altar and put an end to this. "Sammy was a brat when he was a kid? Tell me something I don't know. Jesus, Sam, I knew you felt guilty just surfing porn and picking your nose, but your darkest secrets are boring even for you."

He hoped Sam heard what he meant: _I don't care about any of it. Hang in there._

The thing finally fixed her eyes on Dean, but she spoke to Sam. "He's always there, any way you turn. He made you feel guilty for going away, even though you needed it and he could have come, too. He dragged you back into this life. You half hate him."

She smiled at Dean. It was like the black that bit into her skin. She whispered into the shell of Sam's ear.

"You half hate him, but it doesn't stop you from desiring him."

At first, Dean didn't even process the words. They didn't make sense, so he ignored them. But she kept talking, and Sam had gone very still, so still that for a moment Dean's brain interpreted it wrong.

"I told you I'd find it, Sam," she said softly. "I can uncover things that even you can't. All the things you want to do to him, and all the things you wish he'd do to you. Shall we make a list?"

Sam's foot lashed out, so fast and savage that Dean took a step backward before he knew he was doing it. Grain and flowers and blood sprayed through the air. A guttering candle landed on the floor as the rotting table they'd used for an altar went over.

Hel's figment of a face—already fragmenting and abstracting at the edges—was as grave and unmoved as it had been at the beginning. "Don't bother me again," she said, and she turned to mist.

Dean unfroze himself and kicked the debris out of the way. Sam's head was down. The front of his shirt was dark with blood. Dean crouched, pushing down the pounding of his heart, and reached out to tip his brother's chin up. "Sammy?"

Sam jerked away. He didn't look at Dean as he got up and left the room.

"Son of a…." Dean wiped Sam's blood off his fingers on his pants and followed.

Sam made it four steps outside the house they'd been squatting in before he fell to his knees and threw up. Dean watched his back heave in silence. What the hell did you say to someone who'd just been mind-raped in front of a live audience with an accusation of incestuous longing for a finale? Dean didn't know. He did know that Sam was still armed with three weapons at a minimum, and that touching him probably wasn't a good idea no matter how much Dean might want to.

After a long moment, Dean went to the car and got in. He stared out the windshield blankly and tried to figure out what he was supposed to be feeling. Sam resented him, thought of himself as a walking infection, and apparently on some level wanted to do the nasty. Dean should be the one upchucking on the ground outside.

But he wasn't. No matter how he tried, he couldn't seem to feel anything. A little disbelief, maybe.

Something was stinging in his hand. He brought his palm up, rubbing at the splinter that had lodged under the skin.

The passenger side door creaked open a quarter of an hour later, and Sam slammed it shut after himself. Dean risked a glance over at him. His face was still smeared with blood and he was the greenish color of spoiled milk, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. His expression was completely empty. He didn't look at Dean.

In a hundred miles or so, they'd stop and Sam would disappear into a gas station bathroom to reemerge with fresh clothes and a clean face. Dean would bring back doughnuts and Twix bars from the convenience store, crank up the music, and shoot the breeze about the next case. For now, he just shut up and drove.

º º º º

Two weeks later in a diner in Fresno, it had started to seem a little funny. Because, come on, seriously? Sam, hot for his big brother? This was the guy who washed his hands hourly and bitched about Dean's dirty socks spread all over the floor. He actually _blushed_ when people found his porn stash. Torrid, forbidden passion wasn't really his bag. That Dean was supposed to somehow be the focus didn't even seem real.

If he hadn't seen Sam's face when Hel had dropped the bomb, Dean would have written the whole thing off as crap. He had seen Sam's face, though, and he'd seen the way Sam had been carefully blank around him for over a week afterward. He'd listened to Sam's noncommittal conversation and felt Sam flinch away from his touch. Dean had carried on, because that was what Dean did. Eventually Sam had begun to relax again, but something was still vibrating and _off_—which was ridiculous, because this whole thing was ridiculous.

So he waited until Sam had a mouthful of coffee before asking suspiciously, "You really got the hots for me?"

The splutter was textbook. Sam turned as white as one of his carefully laundered undershirts, then flushed scarlet an instant later. He narrowly avoided ruining another button-down with coffee by fumbling the cup into his plate.

Sam darted glances over the diner's occupants. "What the goddamned hell, Dean?" he hissed.

Dean shrugged. "Not like anybody knows us in here."

Sam stared at him. Not really in a starry-eyed, Lauryn Hill, can't-take-my-eyes-off-of-you way. "That… isn't really the point."

For the time it took to chew his pancakes, Dean watched Sam. Still bright red, Sam dropped his eyes and started playing with his eggs with his fork, as if he hadn't even noticed that he'd soaked them with coffee.

"So is it 'cause I've got a great ass?"

Sam's head snapped up. "Dean," he said, quiet, stricken.

Dean felt a surge of irritation. "What? It's a legitimate question."

He didn't get an answer, though. Sam pushed abruptly back from the table and took off for the men's room.

Dean expected silent, emo Sam after that. Instead he got brittlely cheerful, pod-person Sam, a whole day of it, and that was almost more than he could stand. It was fucking annoying, and while Dean considered dropping the subject, the way Sam was acting just made him want to poke the scab harder in retaliation.

So he did. Dean had never been big on suppressing his impulses, and in the last few months he'd refined indulging them into the closest thing to a religion he'd ever had.

When Sam emerged from the bathroom the next morning—where he'd been getting dressed lately, like he'd turned into the shy fat chick in gym class—Dean arranged to have one leg up on the table as he bent over to tug his jeans cuff down over his bootleg, shirt riding up his back. He'd used it a million times with girls, and the effect was like feeding catnip to a kitten.

He heard Sam shuffle over the carpet and grind to a halt, and Dean looked up. He almost went overboard and batted his eyes. "What do you think, Sammy?" He swung his leg down and leaned against the table, exhibiting his outfit. It was the same thing he wore every day, but it wasn't like he had a hell of a lot of options. "Does this bring out my eyes?"

For several seconds, Sam just stood there. There was no gratifying bitchface. Instead, his expression was once again blank: not carefully closed, as so often of late; more like his brain had temporarily stopped communicating with his face.

"This is funny to you," he said finally. It wasn't a question.

Dean straightened up. "Yeah, kind of. Come on, you're not seeing it?"

There was a glint in Sam's eyes for a moment, a little flash of something there and quickly leashed. It occurred to Dean that this might be more like feeding catnip to a tiger.

But all Sam did was say, slowly, carefully, "I don't give a fuck what it does for your eyes, Dean."

Dean gave his own ass a pinch through his blue jeans. "Does this at least make my butt look good?"

Sam flushed. "Not everybody in the world is really invested in your backside, Dean."

"What _are_ you invested in, anyway?"

It was an honest question. This thing was weird. Weird, inappropriate, probably appalling, and almost as good as that time Sam had had a crush on his tenth grade math teacher. Dean knew he should be freaked, but he was going to Hell in less than half a year. His freak-out card was maxed out. The closest he could manage to freaked was curious.

Sam blushed impossibly redder and turned away to hide it, stuffing odd pieces of laundry into his duffle. "Why do you keep asking?"

"Because I want to know."

"I don't know whether to be grateful or not," Sam bit out. "You get front-row seating to my inner secrets, and you don't want to rip me a new one over anything else Hel found in my head?"

"Nah. Life's short, especially mine, and this way's much more fun."

Sam stood with his eyes lowered for a while, fiddling with the zipper on his duffle. "Everything really does have to be a punchline for you," he said. "Including me."

Dean stood blinking as Sam shouldered past him.

That parting shot had been a low blow, in Dean's opinion. Not that it had gotten to him. Much. He flirted with the waitress at breakfast while Sam pretended not to watch—to make himself feel better, Dean told himself. Life really was short.

º º º º

Six hours later, he found Sam in a crappy bar, drinking whiskey at two in the afternoon and slurring his words as he told Dean no one could save him because he didn't want to be saved. Two days after that, Dean got some idea of what it was to have someone else traipsing around in his head. Granted, his turn didn't involve the airing of any secret perversions, or even embarrassing childhood crimes.

Which made it all the more galling that, when he saw Dean's dream of Lisa, the emotion in Sam's eyes was pity.

Bobby had woken up and made a full recovery, and he never even went all surly on them for finding out what had happened with his wife. Dean repaid him by making a point of not mentioning any incestuous crushes between the boys he apparently loved like his own.

Dean had always been the good son.

º º º º

It stuck in his mind. It wasn't that he thought about it, exactly; it just lodged in his brain and wouldn't leave him alone.

For about twenty minutes across the corner of West Virginia, the radio picked up an entertaining salad of evangelical programming and classic rock. _The change has come. Have you found Christ, my brothers? He has a plan for you, yes, you. Ah, take it easy, babe. And if anyone says, "I love God," but he hates his brother, my friends, that man is…._

_It's down to me. Take it easy, babe._

º º º º

He was pretty sure he had it figured out. Sam was apparently bi and, for whatever reason, he'd never felt like he could tell Dean. Maybe because of the gay jokes, which Dean felt a little bad about in retrospect. Though it wasn't like he'd _meant_ them; hell, he was hardly that discriminating himself when he fooled around. At any rate, it made sense. Sam was into dudes, and Dean was the only dude Sam ever saw for more than a week together. It was probably unavoidable, developing a crush like that, no matter how idiotic you knew it had to be. Especially on someone as good-looking as Dean.

Sam needed to be aggravated out of it, was all.

Lying face down on top of the covers in some motel in some town in some state, Dean stretched, toeing his boots off and wiggling his ass in the air. Sam stoically didn't react—until Dean dragged a hand up his own side with a groan. Then he heard Sam's breath catch.

Another day, Dean did obscene things with a lollipop in the Impala for a good twenty miles. When he caught sight of Sam shifting uncomfortably against the passenger side door, the light playing over his skin and highlighting the flush in his cheeks, Dean grinned around his candy and fed the motor more gas.

"Hey, Sammy," he said the day after that, "you like Aqua Velva on me or Old Spice?" And Sam turned away with what couldn't be a flash of hurt across his face, because even Sam wasn't that much of a girl.

They worked their way along the Gulf Coast. It was warm in South Texas, and Dean stripped out of his over-shirt every chance he got to feel the air on his skin. Sam rolled his sleeves back to bare the long sinews of his arms and the hollows of his wrists, but otherwise he stayed more buttoned up than ever. Dean stepped up close behind him where he sat researching a haunting on the laptop and leaned so his arm lay an inch from Sam's on the table. The unseasonable heat and the Gulf humidity had gotten even to Sam; his hair was curling behind his ear and the clean smell of him rose up strong. Sam managed to keep his expression clear, but he gave a faint shiver when Dean shifted, and Dean felt a little thrill of victory.

Once, from inside the bathroom, he heard Sam return to their room. Dean emerged in a cloud of steam, scrawny motel towel slung low over his hips. He let the cloth fall apart to show a long stretch of thigh while water trickled down his neck and over his chest in a way Dean personally thought was pretty fetching. Sam just stood there, staring at the wall. He was taut and pale and the look on his face wasn't that funny, not really. But it burned low in Dean's belly like cheap bourbon.

"C'mon, Sammy," he said more than once. "If it's not my ass, what is it?" And on one occasion, he paused while he was programming a new cellphone and asked, "So when I do this"—he gyrated his hips like a stripper—"does it turn you on?"

"Fuck you," Sam replied without looking up from his magazine.

"No, seriously. How about when I kick ass at pool?"

No response.

"Or I suppose it could be my general badassery. I'd want to bang me, too," Dean mused. "I'm pretty much James Bond, but with monsters."

"No, you're Peter Venkman, but without Sigourney Weaver."

Then there was another night, when they'd both had a few and they'd been debating Jo or Bela, and they were buzzed enough to admit probably Bela, but really, where was the sense in choosing when the only sound choice was obviously Jo _and_ Bela, and it was like old times, except that Dean could _smell_ Sam, smell the whiskey on his breath and the sweat on his skin and Dean thought he could even smell his blood when Sam laughed, tipping his head back and exposing his throat, and Dean said, "So when we're hunting and I kill something and like it, does it turn you on?"

Sam flinched like he'd been struck. But Dean saw the heat in his eyes before he lowered them.

º º º º

It wasn't that big of a goddamned deal. If Sam would just stop angsting about what his dick wanted and maybe give in and jerk off without one hand on that whip he kept flogging himself with, this could all be over. They could just go back to the way it had been before Sam fucked it up, the two of them them working together better than ever, and Dean could enjoy the last bit of sunlight he was going to get.

Leaving New Orleans, Dean reached down and fiddled with the radio while Sam stuck his head out the window to let the wind blow through his hair like some ridiculously outsized dog. Dean left the radio on the first station he could get to come in clearly.

_And your father'd be there with her_

_If he only could_

_So don't play with me,_

_'Cause you're playing with fire_

They left Bourbon Street behind in a glory of beads and tin coins.

º º º º

He hit on thirteen waitresses between Baton Rouge and Birmingham. He went home with five of them. At the table, Sam plastered grins on his face and shook his head at Dean's antics, but the pissy eye-rolls that used to signal real irritation were gone. Dean felt the void, and it pissed him off. It was like Sam was trying to build a wall and retreat behind it. Well, fuck him. It was too late for that. If he was feeling _suffocated_ by Dean, maybe he shouldn't be the one making Dean want to scream with his thousand and one plans to save his soul and his constant fucking solicitude.

They stopped for lunch at the Birmingham Silver Dollar. Dean slid into a booth and felt a warm little clench his his stomach when he heard the waitress approaching. He started cooking up a smile and some charm before she even came in sight. What she looked like wouldn't matter, anyway.

He swung his head up to start flirting and found himself smiling at their waiter.

The guy smiled, too, all professionalism, handing out their menus. He was tall, with dark hair, an easy grin, and an unburdened way of moving. Pretty good-looking and maybe twenty. His eyes passed over Dean and then snapped back again, his grin deepening as he registered the barely-veiled invitation there.

"Get you guys something to drink?"

His voice wasn't as deep as Dean had expected, but he had nice brown eyes and a well proportioned frame. None of this limbs-everywhere, Sasquatch bullshit. Dean let his eyes travel down and back up in an obvious cruise. The guy didn't even blush, just smiled.

Sam scratched at the same place on his hand that always got raw when he washed his hands too much. He probably didn't even know he was doing it, but Dean wanted to snap at him to stop.

"Coffee, nice and hot," Dean said. He smiled. "No need to bother with the cream and sugar."

"You got it. And you?"

Sam lifted his eyes. "Just ice water, please."

The waiter nodded and Dean could have sworn that he actually spared Sam an appraising glance, but then he turned his grin on Dean again before slipping his order pad into his back pocket and moving off.

Sam had that same look he'd been wearing a lot lately, and, no, it still wasn't funny, not really, but it warmed Dean up faster than the coffee or even liquor. Like all signs of Sam's pain, it pulled a reaction out of Dean on an elemental level, except that this was a dark, heavy feeling that wasn't exactly aversion.

Dean laughed. "Look like you're sucking on a lemon, Sammy," he said, because it wasn't funny but it was something he couldn't stop wanting to see.

He sang loudly with the Rolling Stones as they drove out of Birmingham. _Baby better come back next week, 'cause you see I'm on a losing streak._ If Sam hadn't insisted on burying himself in maps and notes, he could've sung along, too.

Dinner was gas station sandwiches at a rest stop overlooking the Chattahoochee River. Dean sat backwards on the picnic table bench and leaned against the tabletop, feeling the sun-warmed wood digging into his back and raising a hand against the light slanting in from the west. Sam came up the hill from the port-a-johns while Dean looked out over the expanse.

Spring wasn't all that far off, down here. The sun was mellow and golden on Sam's skin, and it caught in his hair. Dean swiveled back to the table and his sandwich as Sam slid onto the opposite bench.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean said for the millionth time, giving Sam a salacious grin. He saw Sam tense up. "So what is it? Is it my freckles? My maverick sense of style? My amazingly perky buttocks?"

Sam just sat, shoulders rigid, looking at his tuna on rye. Dean polished off his sandwich, drained his soda noisily, swallowed. "My overall irresistible sex appeal?" he tried.

He hadn't really been expecting an answer. It was just the game: ragging on his little brother because it was his job to rag on his little brother, like it was his job to keep him safe.

"Your hands," Sam said quietly. "Your hands when you're cleaning guns."

It stopped Dean cold. He stared for more than a minute, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

º º º º

A couple of days later, Dean checked them into a place outside of Port St. Joe that actually turned out to have mirrors on the ceiling. That part hadn't been intentional, but it was awesome. While Sam took off for the library, Dean drew the curtains, stripped, and threw the polyester bedspread aside to bare the sheets. Of course they'd be red.

He stretched out. He watched his own limbs moving against the fabric and let one hand move down to wrap around his half-hard cock, studying himself the while. His amulet slid to one side of his chest when he brushed one hand over a nipple.

He tried to see it. Clean jaw, strong thighs, chest layered with muscle, power without bulk. Eyes that girls seemed to like a lot. Tawny skin made a nice contrast against the garish sheets, and the cords in his arms flexed as he worked his cock in a slow rhythm, just rocking his wrist and sweeping loose fingers over the head. It was a nice cock, too: long, thick, purplish against his belly and always good and hard. Dean knew he was hot. But there was something he wasn't seeing. Had to be. A body like that got girls crawling on their knees for it—got men too, when he wanted them—but it didn't get someone's full attention, not for real, not for years. Not Sam's.

Dean bit his lip and worked himself faster. So close. Close. But he couldn't—

He beat his fist into the mattress. His cock bobbed plaintively at the vibration. He tried again, jerking himself hard until he was sore. The same thing happened.

_I can't get no_

_I can't get no satisfaction_

He rolled off the mattress and kicked the bed. The stupid red sheets came untucked. He put his clothes back on without even taking a cold shower, dumped the comforter back on the bed, and did push-ups until the hard-on subsided.

Sam came back about an hour later. He had a stolen library book under his arm and a satisfied look on his face. Dean still felt stretched thin and wound up, and it was all he could do not to pace like a caged animal.

"Hey, got some info on our haunted boat," Sam said. "Found some leads for who the spirit could be and found out where the boat's moored. We should probably make an early morning of it."

Suddenly Dean didn't want to be in the same room with him. "Awesome," he said flatly, pulling his jacket on. "Don't wait up."

Sam's pursed lips confirmed Dean's suspicion that he didn't want to spend a pleasant domestic evening in this shithole with him or anywhere near him. "Did you not hear me just now? We need to get an early start."

"Relax, I'm just getting some air," Dean snapped back. "I'll be ready for the job, just get your damned beauty sleep." He slammed the door behind him.

He meant to go for a walk. Actually, he did go for a walk. He started off without even bothering to look which direction he was heading in, just moving, rapid and jerky, head down against the cool night air and the drizzle. He looked up again sometime later and found he was on what passed for Port St. Joe's main street. A couple of blocks in front of him, light and noise spilled out onto the wet pavement from a doorway. A group of smokers outside cast long, laughing shadows.

What the hell. Not like he'd be able to get to sleep without a drink, anyway.

Dean shouldered his way to a seat at the bar and signaled for a double of whatever they had cheapest. It was loud, but not all that crowded. Eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night was when a lot of places cranked the music up to try to mask the thinness of the crowds. It was lively enough, though, and at least they weren't playing the crap Sam liked.

_I'm givin' you a piece of my mind_

_There's no charge of any kind_

He knocked back half of his drink and glowered at the bar, kneading his thighs through his jeans. Fuck Sam, anyway.

Another whiskey barely rocked Dean's tolerance at this point, but at least it was enough for him to feel something. He chatted up a blond thing in a tank top, but she couldn't bring him back to her place and it wasn't like he'd brought the car.

Fuck Sam, anyway. This was all his fault. It was supposed to be one last, perfect year, just the two of them. Dean's reward. He thought he deserved it, after everything. One last, perfect memory of Sam.

Two doubles and a shot were enough to buzz him. They were enough to make the hair prickle on the back of his neck under the collar of his jacket, and too much for him to pick up a pool cue and join the game behind him, though he nearly did anyway just to start a fight. He could still clean up at darts, though, and he did. Dad had trained him never to get too drunk to aim.

Fuck Sam, anyway. Fuck him for making Dean sit and wonder what he did to him to twist him up inside, and fuck his apparent need to have half the demon world lusting after him in one way or another, and fuck him for still managing to be fucked up somehow even after Dean had bought his life with his own soul. Fuck the kind of brother who would rather break Dean's toys than let him have something of his own.

"This seat taken?"

A redhead wearing strong perfume hopped up on the stool without waiting for an answer. Dean swept his eyes over her, taking in the way her Levi's hugged her hips and her sweater hugged her breasts. She had Double-Hs and cherry-red lipstick on. She returned his look with a grin.

Fuck Sam, anyway.

"I guess it is," Dean said. "What's your name?"

She smiled again. Her lips looked sweet like pie. "Samantha. But you can call me Sam if you buy me a drink."

Dean smiled back. "No shit?"

"None at all, cowboy."

She had a Jack and coke, and then another, and another. She leaned on his arm as they headed back to the motel. Dean slipped a hand into the back pocket of her jeans and got her perfume all over his clothes.

"Oh, hey, I just realized," he said about halfway there. "My fraternity brother'll be back at the room. Don't worry about him, though; he's passed out cold and we can just keep the lights off."

She snorted, but she was still leaning into him and tracing lines on his hipbone with her nails. "You sure about that?"

"Oh, yeah. He blacked out before I even left, and you can't wake his ass up even when he's sober. So, you still up for it?"

She thought about it for a few paces, hair bouncing, face thoughtful. "Sure," she said.

They arrived. He got the door open after only one miss and pushed her into the room, shoving his hands under her sweater while she giggled faintly and whispered, "Shhhhhhh, don't wake the baby." There was just a sliver of light from the parking lot that made it past the curtains. It only fell as far into the room as Dean's bed, but he didn't have to see Sam to know he was awake. Didn't have to see or hear him to know exactly where he was.

The girl worked his belt buckle open while he pulled her sweater up and off and got his hands on her magnificent tits. He left his own clothes in a pile and laid her down on the bed, peeling the Levi's down her body. The sliver of light flashed over her when she bucked her hips up to let him. He pulled her panties aside and pushed two fingers into her without preamble.

He ate her out, tasted the slippery-hot of her and cupped her ass in his hands. He made her come and her breathing was ragged, but Sam's was silent five feet away. When she came down, he knelt on the bedspread in the crack of light and turned her over. He tore open a condom packet with his teeth while she got on her hands and knees. Someone else's name was tattooed on her hip, but his hand hid the whole thing from sight.

She was a talker. She kept it to whispers and whimpers but apparently alcohol made her as talkative as it made him silent. There was empty, generic filth spilling from her mouth as he pushed inside.

_Want your cock. Fuck me. Yeah, fuck me. So big. Harder._

Dean clamped his fingers over her hips and hauled her back onto him, making her hair sway and her tits bounce. Hot. Wet. Tight. He could get where he needed if he just pushed hard enough—

"Touch yourself," he said, low in her ear. It was the first thing he'd said since they'd gotten here. For the first time, he heard a rustle from the other bed, too quiet for the girl to even notice.

She moaned a little and fumbled one hand back to work over her clit. "You feel me?" Dean demanded.

"Yes," she hissed.

"What'm I like?"

"Everywhere." She was still whispering, her voice mixed up with the creak of the mattress and the slap of their skin. "Feel you everywhere. So big. Fuckin' _delicious_. Better than candy. God, give it to me."

Dean shifted behind her for better leverage. He turned his eyes up to the mirrored ceiling, and in the dim light he could make out the ghostly outline of Sam lying still in the other bed.

Then she clamped down on him—hard, deliberate, not an orgasm though she was faking one—and Dean came.

He dropped to one side rather than collapsing onto her, taking care of the condom with shaking hands while she got her breath back. He lay on top of the covers, looking straight ahead, and didn't say anything.

"I guess I'd better go," she said after a while, and her voice held neither disappointment nor much recrimination. He didn't answer, and she pulled her clothes on without waiting for anything else from him.

Dean waited for the door to close before he rolled under the comforter, on his side, facing away from Sam. His stomach felt queasy, too heavy in his body. Perfume hung in the air.

* * *

><p>º º º º<p> 


	2. Two

Dean woke to the motel room door closing. The crinkling of paper and the smells of coffee and food pervaded the room. He opened his eyes.

For a long while, he just watched the light shifting on the canary yellow wallpaper as Sam moved around in the room behind him. Dean swallowed. His mouth was disgusting, but his head was clear. There was a horrible, sinking feeling in his stomach. Finally he made himself turn over.

"Morning," was all Sam said. "Got breakfast. Marina opens at eight."

And for days afterward, Sam was _nice._ He said nothing about Samantha, or the food, or Dean's laundry. He worked their boat job without a hitch. He seemed almost relaxed. It put Dean on edge, and it made the clutching guilt so much worse. Dean stopped at restaurants Sam would like and bought the frou-frou coffee he drank and even let him drive. He basically did everything short of falling down in the dirt and grabbing Sam's knees and saying _Jesus, Sammy, I'm sorry_ and through it all, Sam was pleasant.

Sam's voice was pleasant enough when, about halfway across the Florida panhandle, he said, "Pull over."

Dean glanced over at the passenger seat. Sam was facing forward, expression unreadable, posture neutral. The grip he had on the door where he rested his arm in the window was a little too tight, but it wasn't something anyone else would notice.

Dean checked his mirrors for nonexistent traffic and rolled the car onto the gravel shoulder. As soon as they'd stopped, Sam was out the door, striding off into the field beyond the weedy hedgerow.

Dean stepped out of the car and came slowly around the hood. Sam was standing in the sun, turning, almost as if he were looking for something except that he had a hand kneading at the back of his neck and his eyes weren't on the ground. The feeling that he was in for some kind of heart-to-heart grew in Dean's stomach, and with it, irritation that was finally enough to blot out the nebulous guilt that had been dogging him. He cursed, stepped over the broken barbed-wire fence, and went up to Sam.

"Goddamn it, Sam, what—"

His head snapped back. The hard-packed ground under the weeds jarred his bones, and he only registered the visual of Sam's fist flying at his face after it had happened. Rolling with the punch and back to his feet should've been hardwired by now—hell, ten years ago—but somehow Sam could always knock him on his ass.

Dean climbed to his feet, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Want to let me in on something?"

Anger radiated off of Sam, but he still stood taut, controlled. All Dean wanted to do was tear that control apart and mess it up.

"No," said Sam. "And you know what, Dean? I never fucking did."

Dean punched him.

All fights end up on the ground. Their Dad had drilled that into them, over and over again, and it had been the one thing out of all John Winchester's orders and instructions that Sam had taken to heart more than Dean. They rolled, winter-dead stalks digging into them and branches tearing their clothing. Dean elbowed Sam in the ribs. Sam kicked Dean in the groin. Dean tore out a patch of Sam's hair and heard him gasp, saw his eyes water. Sam head-butted him, and Dean shook his head, momentarily dazed.

The thing about sparring with someone with whom you were equally matched and whose fighting style you knew as intimately as breathing was that it always came down to who wanted to win more. This was how they'd always been. They'd fought, set at each other by their father's will, but sparring had become a second language to them. They'd always been physical.

Finally Sam got him in an armbar. One moment Dean had Sam under him, holding him down with his weight; the next, Dean went for a choke and suddenly Sam's legs were clamped down over his side and his neck. Pain flared at his elbow.

Dean gasped and tapped out. Sam didn't release him. Instead he dropped one leg and punched him, a lot harder than was necessary.

Weight slammed against Dean's sternum. Sam loomed over him, tight with fury, the smell of him pressing all around.

"I've fucking had it, Dean."

Dean dug his boot heel into Sam's ankle. It was futile, it couldn't get him out of the hold, but it would hurt like hell. "Fuck you," he ground out. "All I've ever done is take care of you, all I've ever done is be there for you, and I'm _suffocating_ you? _I'm_ suffocating _you?_ You're not the one going to Hell for me, you self-absorbed sack of shit!"

Sam picked Dean up by the shoulders and slammed him back down into the ground. Dean's breath left his body in a rush. "You've had your fun, Dean. Now you're going to listen to me."

Sam was still holding him down, and a tingle ran over Dean's skin. He glared up at Sam's dirty hair and sweaty neck. "Fine," he bit out.

"So you know. You know I want my own brother. Good for you." A lone car hurtled by on the highway a few yards away. Sam leaned in, and Dean had a sudden thought about bugs on pins. "You know why I never acted on this?"

Dean blinked. Of all the questions Sam could have asked, that was the one Dean would least have expected. "What?" he asked, stupidly.

Sam's smile was a little twisted. "It wasn't because I thought you'd reject me. I _knew_ you wouldn't, because I do have a mirror and this is you we're talking about. If I'd wanted you, I could've had you. I never acted on it because _I_ needed it not to happen. I live in a car with you. You're the only family I have, the only colleague I have, and at this point, the only friend I have who isn't thirty years older. So, yeah. I'm suffocating on you. I've been suffocating on you for years just like you've been suffocating on me whether you know it or not. I never acted on it because I needed the fucking _space,_ Dean."

Dean lay there slack-jawed.

"So let me explain something to you. When you finally decide to stop screwing around and take something for yourself other than shitty food and girls you'll never get to see again, it'll be because _you_ want it. You don't get to blame me for a second, because yeah, fine, I'm a sick son of a bitch, but I did my part. You're the one who wouldn't let this go. When you want to fuck me, you'll have to get on your knees and _beg_ me to let you in."

When Dean found speech again, he said, "What, you won't be fucking me in this fantasy of yours?"

Sam smirked. The smug son of a bitch was _actually smirking._ "I don't think you'd want me to do that without working up to it."

There was no way that gave Dean a thrill.

Sam's face hardened again. "You're my brother. Yeah, I love you. Maybe I'm even in love with you. There's no one else around to fall in love with."

"Damn, Sammy, you really know how to make a man feel special," Dean broke in bitterly. He didn't know where his pang of disappointment came from.

Fingers dug hard into Dean's shoulder. "So maybe I'm a little in love with you," Sam continued. "So maybe I even want something I shouldn't want. But I don't need it. I need my _brother,_ Dean, not the other thing. I've coped without it for years. I can keep it in my pants just fine. Can you say the same thing?"

Then he was gone. His weight and sharp bones lifted, and he was striding back to the car, leaving Dean blinking at the sudden sunlight with jelly where his skeleton was supposed to be. He watched Sam go. If Sam was holding himself a little too straight, moving a little too stiffly, at least he was moving.

Dean let his head fall back against the hard ground.

º º º º

He was fucking sick of the Rolling Stones, Dean decided. Time for… time for some Asia.

º º º º

Then everything was different.

Seriously. He went to bed one night, woke up the next morning, and the world had changed. At least, Sam had changed, which came to the same thing.

They were just outside Miami. Huey Lewis and the News came blaring out of the alarm clock at the same moment that Dean spat into the sink, and Sam sat up slowly.

The look on his face was… bad. It was worse than the kicked puppy thing. It was the kind of look that, if Dean knew what had put it there, would generally make him go out and make something suffer for. It was not the kind of look that people ordinarily woke up wearing when they'd been fine the previous day. Dean knew, deep in his bones, that some profound discontinuity had occurred.

He tried to smooth it over with glibness ("Yeah, which usually follows Tuesday"), but Sam only walked up and clung to him like an overgrown toddler.

Soft hair tickled Dean's cheek. The clean, warm smell of him filled Dean's nose: soap and skin and fabric softener. "Dude, how many Tuesdays did you have?"

"Enough." Sam pulled back. "Wait, what do you remember?"

In the days and weeks that followed, Dean tried more than once to figure that out. He remembered sitting in a diner. He remembered Sam biting out terse answers to his questions while all his attention was on a guy eating pancakes. A few weeks ago he'd had learned that Sam apparently had some kind of hopeless yearning for him, but in that diner it had been like Dean was only an echo to him. Which, if the whole time-loop thing wasn't a joke, Dean realized with a sick feeling, was probably true. So there was the diner, and then the Trickster, and then "Back in Time." Dean thought there were other memories somewhere just out of sight, but when he tried to probe them, there was just cold, white fire.

That and Sam, who wasn't talking much but whose eyes told a lot. When he'd pulled away from the bear hug he wrapped Dean in, he'd looked almost like he'd been physically beaten. Dean had wanted to do something idiotic like stroke his hair or hug him again.

The sheer weirdness of the moment had made it easy not to. But now it was all different. Dean wasn't sure he liked different.

Sometimes he woke up and in the next bed, Sam would turn onto his back, stare at the ceiling, and pretend he hadn't been watching Dean sleep. Sometimes Dean caught a glimpse of so much gratitude in Sam's eyes it made him want to punch something. Sometimes Sam went blank for hours at a time. Sometimes Sam just stared at him, and Dean knew that look, because he'd been wearing it when Sam came back from the dead.

A lot of the time, Sam was cold, hard, and laconic. He tried not to be, Dean could tell, but he still was, as if it were simply too habitual not to show through. Dean told himself that he didn't recognize this Sam.

º º º º

There was something Dean wasn't getting. The night after Broward County, Sam had told him about living the same Tuesday over and over again, voice quiet, curled in on himself under the covers. That explained the angst and the emo and the goddamned kicked-puppy looks, but it didn't explain the feeling that sometimes crept over Dean that he was sitting next to a killing machine. Nor did it explain the sense that overnight, he'd fallen sharply behind in the task of Knowing Sam. He had that feeling a lot lately, and he hated it. Sam still wasn't talking—so much for Mr. Sharing and Caring. It looked like Dean had to do the touchy-feely stuff this time, and he hated that, too.

"Sam, I swear to God that if you don't start talking, I will blare Ted Nugent for the next thousand miles," he said in a bar in southern Missouri.

Sam's eyes flicked over him dispassionately. He had the laptop open. "Talk about what?"

"What's been up with you. And something is definitely up with you."

"I'm fine, Dean. We need to concentrate on finding Bela and getting you out of the deal."

"Come on, man. If you're this wound up when you've got me, what're you going to be like on your own?"

That got him to look up, at least. "I can take care of myself, thanks."

"You know that for a fact, do you?"

Sam smiled. It wasn't a very nice smile. "Yeah. I do."

Dean gritted his teeth. He had four months left on the clock, and Sam wanted to keep his little secrets. Just great. Well, if he wanted to play games, Dean could play games.

He tipped a long swallow of his beer into his mouth, throat working, and leaned back in his chair, knees falling apart. He put his beer down and gave a table of girls across the room a silent how-ya-doin'. Sam didn't seem to notice.

It took Dean ten minutes to reel in a hot brunette in a tiny red dress. Losing his touch, apparently. "Hey," he drawled as she came up.

She paused, as if she'd just been heading for the ladies' room and hadn't made the trip over from the bar especially for him. "Hey, yourself," she said, leaning against the table next to Sam. "Never seen you here before."

Dean gave her an easy grin. "Just passing through town. Don't really know anybody around here, so we pretty much have to rely on the kindness of strangers to find our way around."

One of her eyebrows went up. "That so."

"Yep."

She walked between his spread legs, and Dean brought his hands up to her waist. He checked for a reaction out of the corner of his eye. Sam's eyes slid over them, expressionless, then returned to the laptop screen.

Dean was surprised at the intensity of his irritation.

Tamping it down, he smiled up at her. "You want me to show you around?" she asked.

He thought about it. He was in, no question, but she had the look of a tease. She'd make him wait all night, make sure he knew his place before she had her way with him. Usually he was all about that, but for some reason he wasn't feeling it right then. "Love to," he said, "but I can't tonight. Can I have your number?"

Later, back at the motel, Dean tacked the few thoughts he'd scribbled down on a cocktail napkin up next to Sam's scarily organized spread of information on Bela. It wasn't much of an addition, and there wasn't much to add it to. They pretty much had bupkis. Sam lay on his bed, knees bent, just looking at the ceiling.

"Man, nice catch for a town this size, am I right?" Dean said, grabbing the gun oil from his duffle and leaving the socks that fell out scattered on the floor. "What do you think, B-cup or C-cup?"

Predictably, Sam didn't answer.

"We actually could stay another day. Even you might get some action if you quit staring at Satanic symbols in bars like they're jack-off material. Hey, maybe Carly would do us both."

"What day is it?"

"I mean, I know you need training wheels, and she's… what?"

"What day is it?"

Dean took a few seconds to respond, running his eyes over Sam, then the room, then Sam again, and trying to figure out what the fuck. "Saturday. The sixteenth."

Sam just nodded and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "There's a vampire nest in Austin," he said.

"Excuse me?"

Sam padded to the bathroom; Dean heard the water in the sink. "Vampire nest. Austin, Texas," Sam called.

Dean started to answer, then bit his tongue. He waited until Sam came back out.

"How, exactly, do you know this?"

Sam looked up from the tee-shirt he was folding. "Heard some things."

Dean waited a little more. It wasn't forthcoming. "What, you turning into Dad, now?" he said, and was surprised to hear it come out of his mouth.

Sam paused. "Heard about a string of disappearances in Austin in a bar somewhere. Checked for the other signs."

"…When?"

Sam's gaze went unfocused. "A while back," he said softly.

Dean could've pressed the issue. Sam owed him some answers, at least, and all this secrecy was the worst kind of hypocrisy after years of tearing into their dad. But Dean didn't. He'd always been the patient one.

He traded the gun oil for his whetstone. "All right, then. I guess we're going to Austin."

º º º º

Dean exhaled, pressing his back against the brick wall of the factory. "Yeah, definitely vampires."

"Told you," said Sam. He bent, hefted the body Dean had just put on the pavement, glanced around the alleyway, and heaved it into a dumpster as discreetly as you could do something like that. Dean got the head.

"She was running to warn the nest," Dean said. "Think any of the others saw us?"

"I—" Sam bit his lip. "Yeah. Maybe. This isn't how…. I don't know." He craned his neck to look up the façade of the building. Brick, small banks of horizontal windows, and old fire escapes stretched up for four floors, topped by huge storage drums. Late afternoon sun glanced off the catwalks connecting the roof to auxiliary buildings. The factory was abandoned, but apparently these vampires were rocking the artist loft thing. "It's almost night," Sam said.

"Yeah, noticed that." Dean wiped a fleck of blood off his cheek with the back of his machete hand. "If they do get wind of us, they'll book. Might not find them for…" For longer than Dean had. "…for months. We've got to take them now."

Sam grimaced. "Yeah." He sighed. "How do you want to do this?"

He'd been asking things like that for the whole case. He'd just randomly sat up in bed the other night and said they needed to go to Austin, then docilely complied with whatever Dean wanted to do on the investigation. It was eerie. It left Dean feeling wrong-footed.

Dean scanned the building once more. "I'll sweep the bottom floors, you sweep the top," he said. "If we luck out, they might be sleeping in."

Sam nodded. "Okay."

Dean had expected an argument. Vamps usually preferred nesting on lower floors, where they had escape routes. Sending Sam to the top had been a gambit to keep him as safe as possible, and Dean had been afraid it would be way too transparent. He'd pass on inspecting this gift horse, though. Sam went swarming up one of the fire escapes, fast and lithe, and Dean let himself in through a service door.

He stalked the empty processing floor, machete at the ready, all senses on maximum. Nothing. He swept the first two floors. The vampires weren't there. Then he swept the third and the fourth. The vampires weren't there, either.

Neither was Sam.

Dean felt his heart speed up and carefully controlled his breathing as he made another swift check of the top floor. Sam couldn't have gotten past him going downstairs, not through the whole building. The vampires certainly couldn't have. So where the hell was he?

"Come on, come on," he whispered to himself, flexing his hand on the machete. "Think, think, think."

They knew this was the right building. The vamp running to warn her nest had confirmed it. It should have been on the ground floor; vampires liked nesting on the ground floor. They liked nesting on the ground floor because it afforded escape routes.

Escape routes. Fire escapes. The roof.

Dean couldn't breathe. "Oh, God. Sammy."

He sprinted back to the east side of the building and up the roof access stairwell. The external door had already been forced. He burst out onto the roof, into the crimson sun setting over Austin, and ran for the storage drums.

A heavy clang from inside one of them brought him up short. He flattened himself against the curving drum, moving forward as fast as he dared. Could've been an object hitting the inside wall. Could've been a body. Could've—

He swung around into the door of the silo. There was only one figure still standing.

Sam looked up slowly. Jury-rigged utility lights glistened on the blood that coated his arms, chest, and half his face. Seven decapitated bodies lay at his feet.

Dean stared at him. Sam looked back, and then away. His body was still strung tight, muscles and sinews flexing on the comedown from adrenaline, ready for the kill. He was lethal. Dean recognized it deep in his body, like suddenly Sam's skeleton was his own, and it disturbed him a bit that he found it beautiful.

"Sam." Dean's voice was loud in the hollow drum. There was confusion in Sam's eyes. He seemed to be half in this place, half in another one. Lost. Like this, he was Dean's little brother again, _his,_ given to him by his father with one command and not enough constraints. The vulnerability there was discordant against the blood that wasn't his and the long glint of steel that was, and it fucked with Dean's head. Everything about Sam fucked with his head. Always had.

Eventually Dean said, "Come home."

Sam came tamely out of the silo.

Dean found a pile of old drop cloths on the second floor and Sam wiped off as much blood as he could, motions slow, eyes blank. It wasn't enough. The stuff matted his hair and was stiffening his shirt, and would be obvious to anyone who so much as caught a glimpse of them. Dean steered them toward the Impala and then the motel room as quickly and unobtrusively as he could.

Sam was quiet for the trip. He wasn't somewhere else like he had been when Dean found him, but he seemed slightly dazed. Dean knew that something had just happened that he didn't fully understand. He couldn't quite get his mind around all the facts and come up with the right question.

They made it to the motel without incident. Dean let them in.

"You got any wounds?"

"I'm fine," Sam said. "You?"

Dean shrugged. "I guess you know I don't."

Sam stripped out of his ruined flannel shirt and stood by his bed, looking at the floor and biting his lip—his body language for when he was trying to work something out, usually what to say. He clearly wasn't so far gone that he wasn't planning on hitting the shower, but he wasn't heading there fast enough for Dean's taste. Dean grabbed a washcloth, stuck it under the sink tap, came over, and began rubbing at the blood on Sam's forearm.

Sam started at the touch, but he seemed too surprised to actually pull away. He was a nervous, solid presence at Dean's side, all shaky breath and warmth. Dean frowned at a pink scar that appeared underneath the flaking blood. It was minor, barely a scratch to them, but he didn't remember seeing it before. He passed it by and moved on.

The tee-shirt was as ruined as the flannel, stuck to Sam's gently rising and falling side. Dean reached for the hem, peeled it up, and daubed at the stained skin underneath. Sam sucked in a breath.

An angry, dark pink line appeared in the cloth's wake, and Dean froze for a moment. Then he attacked the scar harder, swiping at it with faster strokes and clamping one hand around Sam's wrist when he jerked back and tried to get away. The scar tissue was raised on the skin, five or six inches long, wrapping down and around Sam's side. The pattern looked almost like claw marks, except that they were jagged, somehow, not the neat slices of something with tapering talons. It looked almost like human fingernails. It was a mature scar, months old at least, and Dean knew for a fact that Sam hadn't had it ten days ago.

"What the hell is this?"

Sam pushed him off and yanked his shirt down. "It's nothing."

"Do better, Sam," Dean said, voice rising.

"It doesn't fucking matter. Just stop." Sam pushed past him into the bathroom.

Dean held the washcloth, his mind closing in on what it had been circling for days. The shower came on in the bathroom with a rattle and a thump. Dean stood still for a couple of minutes, nodding to himself now and again. Then he set the washcloth on top of the refrigerator, bent to unlace his boots, and stripped off.

Sam had locked the bathroom door, but it was a formality. It didn't even take a paper clip to open it in this place, just a bit of jiggling. Steam from water that had to be far too hot washed over Dean when he entered. As he closed the door behind him, Sam whipped around behind the transparent shower curtain. Rust-colored rivulets were streaming over his body.

Dean took a deep breath. "Let me in."

Sam's deer-in-the-headlights expression was funny, just a little, even at the time. He was pressed back against the tiles, and one hand fluttered uselessly in midair. Dean was just beginning to panic in a vicious little circle of _shit, shit, shit,_ when Sam finally reached out and slid the curtain aside.

The water was scalding hot. Dean gently prodded Sam to the side to adjust the temperature, then maneuvered him back under the spray with a hand on his bare hip. He saw Sam white-knuckle the faucet handle when Dean took up a fresh washcloth and started wiping at the patches of clotted blood that were slowly eroding under the water.

The shower floor was pink, and an overpowering smell of iron rose up with the steam. Dean combed his fingers through Sam's matted hair, freeing rushes of red water with the scrape of his nails over the scalp. Sam shivered. With one hand and his teeth, Dean got the bottle of motel shampoo open; afterwards, he covered Sam with the thin square of soap, and he was a little surprised, a lot relieved, and a tiny bit disappointed that it was more like bathing with Cassie or even bathing himself than it was like washing Johnson & Johnson's out of baby Sammy's eyes in a sink. Sam let him, his back to Dean, arms around his middle, cock flaccid. Dean let the water run until the smell of iron receded and what he could smell was them.

When Sam was clean, Dean dropped the cloth and flattened his palm over the broad, mottled scar in the small of Sam's back. He'd never touched it. It wasn't raised, like ordinary laceration scars, but flat and shiny like a superficial burn. The demon could have brought Sam back without it; this was like they'd marked him. It made Dean furious.

He made Sam turn around to face him. He delayed making eye contact by checking over Sam's torso. New marks interrupted the map he expected to see. There was the scar Bela had left him with, and there was a goddamned _gunshot wound_ on his chest. It would have punctured a lung.

Dean rubbed his thumb over the scars that had caught his attention in the first place and made himself meet Sam's eyes. Sam was watching him. "What's it from, Sammy?"

Sam smiled faintly. "The vampires we just killed."

Dean had known the answer before he asked, and he was oddly touched that Sam was still saying we. Emboldened by the surreality of the situation, he looked Sam over from head to toe—really looked, looked at the totality instead of the scars. Sam picked up his chin and stood under the scrutiny. The water fell between them.

Sam was long and golden all over. Sometime in the past few months, the last traces of his adolescent gawkiness had disappeared. Dean was surprised to realize he missed it a little, and that he'd never actually expected it to go away. But he could adjust. The new reality was lean runner's muscle and endless legs. It was fine, downy hair just under the flat of Sam's stomach, lighter than Dean had realized. It was the drop of water on the curve of Sam's lip and Sam's throat working in that long neck. It was something Dean had been watching and seeing for years, and now he knew better than to fool himself he hadn't.

Wasn't like he was going to heaven, anyway.

Dean let his breath out. "Right. So—"

Big hands came up to cradle Dean's skull, and Sam kissed him. It was forceful, a little desperate, but closed-mouth and somehow polite. It held something back.

Screw that.

Dean got a fistful of Sam's wet hair and tried to stab his tongue into Sam's mouth. He just ended up scraping against teeth and lips clamped shut. He pulled back. "What the hell?"

Sam grinned. He looked stupid with the water plastering his hair down, but it still took Dean's breath away. "I told you: you'd have to beg me to let you in."

Dean's cock did _not_ make an interested jump at that.

He stared at Sam. "Open up, bitch."

"Not what I had in mind."

"You going to give me a real goddamned kiss or not?" Dean asked, pissy and not caring.

"You seem really unclear on the whole 'beg' concept, Dean."

A heavy thrill ran through Dean's belly. "Please let me fuck your mouth, you bossy little shit."

Sam shrugged. "Better."

Dean didn't wait for any more of an invitation; he crushed his mouth against Sam's and started working it open with his tongue. Neither of them had brushed lately, and it was awkward under the shower spray. Sam whacked his elbow on the soap dish, Dean got a spurt of water up his nose, and they both nearly brained themselves when they tried to shuffle their feet around. But they didn't stop. If they were going to do this, Dean figured, they weren't doing it halfway.

Sam seemed to think along the same lines. He killed the water, toweled off, and passed the thin motel terrycloth off to Dean, businesslike. Dean followed him out of the bathroom, chucking the towel aside as he went. Then Sam started to turn, apprehension on his face, and Dean planted his palms against Sam's chest and shoved him flat on the nearest bed. Sam went down easily, already reaching for Dean before his back hit the mattress, and Dean let the grip on his biceps and his hip wipe all the noise from his head before he could start thinking. He covered Sam's body with his own, moving with the surge of his blood.

It felt good. It felt really, really good. It should've felt weird, but mainly it felt like skin on his and wet hair slipping through his fingers and another cock nudging his own, and Dean was no stranger to any of that. Except that he _was,_ because it was Sam's neck under his mouth, Sam's hands angling Dean's head for easy access, Sam with his own lip caught between his teeth as he threw his head back when Dean's fingers found his nipple. It felt like sex; it felt amazing. But the electric current of sheer _want_ that had nothing and everything to do with lust caught Dean completely off-guard. It frightened him. And he really, really hadn't expected for the tang of guilt in his mouth to make him even harder.

He looked Sam over again, breathing hard. Jesus. His own brother, rock hard and leaking.

Sam raised an eyebrow. "So," he said, wry and self-deprecating, "is it my amazingly perky buttocks?"

Dean stopped himself from grabbing Sam's ass and thought over his answer. _Your wrists. Your handwriting. Your neck. Your smell. The way you move in a fight. Your ribs, and your skin, and that spot under your collarbone right there. You._

He couldn't say any of it. Instead he leaned down and kissed him. Kissed his lips, his forehead, his eyes, his cheeks, his chin, his fucking enormous nose. He couldn't seem to stop. The amulet swayed from his neck, brushing over Sam's breastbone.

Sam squirmed under him, and Dean stopped grinding to make himself focus. The _check on Sammy_ protocol was too deeply ingrained in him not to. Sam's face was clouded with concern and hesitation, and Dean groaned. "Oh, God, now what?"

"Are you…." Sam swallowed and looked away briefly. "You don't…. You know you don't have to do this, right?" It came out in a rush.

Was he actively trying to be condescending? "Yeah, thanks, I'm pretty clear on that."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "You are chronically unclear on that shit, Dean," he said angrily. "So just… if you've got anything to say, now's the time to say it. You're sure you don't hate me for this?"

Dean stared down at him. "Not for this."

Sam nodded. "All right."

He said it like they were discussing which route to take the Impala, and then he just reached down and grabbed Dean's cock. Dean hissed in surprise. It was an unfamiliar grip, flexing around the base of his shaft, sweeping a thumb around the crown without touching the slit or the sensitive wedge just under it, doing everything Dean usually hated and somehow making it good.

"Lube?" Dean got out.

"Your left, between the mattress and box springs. Condom?"

Dean swore and rolled off the bed to find his pants. He got the lube and the condom and clambered back onto the bed. Sam parted his legs and let his head fall back. His cock lay heavy against his belly, pointing the way up his body. Sam had been right: no way Dean wanted to take that thing on a first try. But the thought of it in his hand, the thought of holding Sam's pleasure in his hand—

He poured lube over his fingers and touched the sensitive spot behind Sam's balls. Sam shivered. They were agreed, then: nothing halfway. Dean worked the lube into him, feeling the tightness and heat around one finger, two, three. God. Impossible to think he would be inside that.

"Sammy—" Dean kissed him again. The want was still coursing through him, painful against the instinct of _Sam, Sammy, careful, careful._ Sam took Dean's head in a hard, controlling grip, encouraging with the lift of his hips as Dean scissored and stretched him as gently as he could.

Finally Dean withdrew his hand, breathing a little hard. He laid his fingers along Sam's ribs and lay still over him.

His hands flew to Sam's hips as Sam bit him hard on his shoulder. "Fuck!" Dean jerked back and stared. There was a wicked light in Sam's eyes and a smile on his face that should have made most things run screaming. Dean's pulse sped up a notch.

Catnip to a tiger.

"Fuck, Sammy." Dean got the condom on as fast as he could and slid down Sam's body. The head of his cock nudged against Sam's opening, and a rush of dizziness hit him. Sam's legs came up around him. He started to move forward—

Sam's heels planted unyieldingly against his hips. Dean looked down at him wildly. "No. No fucking way." This did not make sense, could not make sense, could not even be happening.

Sam's breathing was as heavy as Dean's, but he managed a razor-sharp smile. "You want to fuck me?"

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

"You want me to let you in?"

"Yes!"

Sam drew Dean's head down, put his lips to his ear, and whispered. _"Beg."_

The sound that came out of Dean's throat was outright embarrassing. "Jesus, Sammy, please, _please,_ you bastard, just let me— Let me—"

Sam dropped his feet to the bed and rolled his hips up, sheathing Dean halfway into him.

Instinct took over. Dean buried his face in the side of Sam's neck, feeling that half-wet hair curling around his face, smelling it as he rocked forward. Tight. Yielding. Coarse hair tickled the base of his shaft every time he got balls-deep at the end of a thrust, and Sam's long legs cradled him on either side. Dean pulled his head back and looked down, expecting to see Sam laughing with an _I told you so_ on his face.

He wasn't prepared for the awe there. Sam bit his lip and turned his face away when he saw Dean looking, but his emotions were still spilled over his face. He was so overwhelmed he was shaking with it.

"Sammy," Dean said, before his throat closed up. He'd never seen anything like it. _He_ put it there. Him. Dean. Jesus.

Sam grabbed one of Dean's hands blindly and sucked two fingers into his mouth. Dean groaned, and everything fell out of his mind other than the sensations wrapping around his body and half-formed thoughts of hands pinning him down and that smart, bitchy mouth swallowing him down.

He was close. All his body wanted to do was rut, slam deep and mark. Dean shook his head to clear it. Sam was still hard, his erection trapped between their bodies and so red it looked painful, and he had a hand around himself, his face screwed up in concentration as he sucked Dean's fingers.

"C'mon, Sam." Dean withdrew his fingers; Sam turned his face to chase them, but his eyes didn't open. "Sammy, come on, I don't think I can hold out." He pried Sam's fingers off of his dick and replaced them with his own.

Sam bit his lip. "Can't."

"Yes, you can," Dean encouraged him. Just like the time Sam was five and Dean helped him with his first real bike. He slammed the door shut on that particular room in his mind, but not before a sick thrill ran through him. His fingers moved over Sam's shaft, coaxing, gentler than Sam's own.

"I can't. I _can't."_

Dean set his teeth against the need to come. He stroked one hand through Sam's damp hair and made himself speak clearly. "Sam. Sammy, let go."

He kept moving, rocking into Sam's prostate, working his cock, stroking his hair while Sam shuddered. At last Sam's eyes flew open, pupils dilating, and he clutched Dean hard enough to leave bruises as the first warm pulse spilled between them.

Dean kissed coherence goodbye. As Sam's muscles clenched and then relaxed involuntarily in his orgasm, the only thing Dean could hold onto was Sam's body opening around him, opening for him. There was friction gripping his cock, wet warmth as Sam sucked his tongue into his mouth, and the miracle of being inside. Nothing else. Had to get inside—had to get in—

He wrapped his arms around Sam and came. He came hard. He didn't lose consciousness or see white or anything stupid like that; there was just one moment when need was choking him, and then pure relief when it wasn't.

Gradually, arousal faded and other senses came to the fore. He became aware of Sam panting under him, a cramp in his leg, and his cock softening in Sam's body. Dean reached clumsily down to get a grip on the condom as Sam's hand pushed at his hip, urging him back. He missed the pain that crossed Sam's face when he pulled out as carefully as he could.

By the time Dean got rid of the condom and came back with tissues, Sam's eyes had slid shut and his breathing was evening out. Dean looked down at him. Apparently, Sam was the type to pass out after sex. It fucking figured.

Dean hesitated between the two beds. As he started to turn toward his own, Sam's hand shot out and closed around his wrist.

"Don't," Sam said.

Wordlessly, Dean climbed in next to Sam. Sam shifted, exhaling softly, and soon his breathing deepened. Dean lay half on his side and stared at Sam and the ceiling in the dark.

He ought to have thought about this, whatever it was, and whatever it meant. But he couldn't get his mind around the enormity of it, and he had no desire to. Sam was alive, breathing right next to him. Dean couldn't even fully comprehend that much. He could touch Sam now, for as long as he had left, and suddenly it rose up and crushed the breath out of his chest that he could have had this for longer if somehow it had all happened differently.

Sam was curled on his side, one hand tucked under his chin, the other still around Dean's wrist. There was a faint frown on his face even in sleep. Dean bit his own fist. Oh, God, he didn't want to go.

He didn't want to go.

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><p>º<p>

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><p><strong>End notes:<strong> I originally meant to do this with top!Sam, but he declined. There aren't enough topping-from-the-bottom fics in this fandom, anyway.

The Rolling Stones songs referenced are: "Grown Up All Wrong" (title), "Under My Thumb," "Play with Fire," "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (twice), and "Think."

For the record, the results of feeding tigers catnip are actually pretty fucking cute.


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